Brent Can't Think of Anything Witty to Put Here This Week
July 15, 2011 (note: upon a repeat viewing, and with some context as to what exactly was going on, the movie is actually pretty good. However, you don't go to a grocery store to get your hair cut and you don't go to me to read nice things about movies, so I'm not changing the original review)
Well fuck me. I didn´t think there´d ever be a downside to having a hobby that only requires me to leave my cave-like apartment for two hours per week but I guess there comes a time when the clock strikes midnight and I´m forced into the realization that professional obligations will push me into seeing something I really, really don´t want to. I don't have to review it but my self-worth hinges on my traffic numbers and anything involving Harry Potter is sure to generate more clicks than a snuff film starring Justin Bieber. And so we have Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II or whatever and is the 8th movie in the franchise that´s been going strong since back when I thought women still had cooties. It´s an ironic twist of fate that having no interest in something originally intended for preteen outcasts makes you the outcast, but such is the fate that has been bestowed upon me. And so we begin my last American Chronicle review before moving on to bigger and better things in the form of my own site and might I say it couldn´t be a worse way to go out.
Is there really any point to recapping the plot? Seriously there are eight of these motherfuckers and from what I understand (and thanks to a quick Wikipedia session before going) they all have the same basic plot: there are wizards, some are bad, some are good, one is basically Darth Vader and one is basically Luke Skywalker, and they're fighting for some arbitrary reason that´s never really explained beyond "the evil guy´s a douche." It´s like there´s a fucking rulebook for everything in the movie. For example there´s a part where the main bad guy doesn´t die and I asked my friend why (when it seemed like a lightning bolt to the face would kill or at least harm most people) and she said it was because they didn´t destroy some magical thing that contains his soul and blah blah blah blah blah.
A good movie should be able to stand on its own and even if it is part of a series it shouldn´t take a god damn 12-step training program before you can actually figure out what the fuck´s going on. I saw the Pirates movies out of order and was still able to enjoy them despite the fact that I was all but certain the black pearl was a very dark piece of jewelry. And don´t give me that "you have to see all the movies to understand it!" bullshit. There are eight of these things and each one´s over two hours, which means I´d have to dedicate over 16 hours of my life to figure out what the hell´s happening. Well fuck that, I´ve got things to do, like dating super models and curing cancers and shit.
I´ve never liked magical stuff so that´s probably why I´ve never had any interest in theHarry Potter series (that and I like having sex with actual women once in awhile). Magic is essentially the Force in the Star Wars movies in that it basically just works as a one-size-fits-all plot hole spackle for when your heroes get into a situation that would actually require some thought in normal movies. There are numerous times in Deathly Hallows Part II where who I assumed was the good guy (I really couldn´t tell who was good and who was bad) basically had his back against the wall and something would just come out of fucking nowhere and save him. There´s another part where they need warriors or whatever to fight off what I assumed were evil wizards (though they honestly may have just been Oakland Raiders fans for all I know) and some old woman magically made some out of statues in the wall or some bullshit. That´s not creativity, that´s dues ex machina and it´s another way of saying "I cannot think of anything to actually do!" It´s like the writers are just making shit up as they go along for whatever´s convenient to the plot at that very moment like the context-sensitive buttons in videogames that basically spawn whatever weapons or ammo you happen to need at the time.
The acting´s alright if not a little overdramatic and Danielle Radcliffe always has this angry look on his face like someone just cut in front of him in line at Chipotle because they ordered ahead of time. Even at the end when evil gets vanquished (sorry for spoiling that, but I figured you could predict a plot point like "the bad guy dies") he still looks like he just lost to a 7-year-old inHalo. The one performance I did enjoy was Alan Rickman´s turn as this morally ambiguous wizard who basically acts like a teenager stuck in his emo Linkin Park phase. Even now I´m not really sure if I was supposed to be rooting for him or not, though honestly, even if he was evil, the "good" kids are so obnoxious and melodramatic that I may have been on his side, anyway.
One of the many things I didn´t like was the main villain, Voldemort (I had to Google the spelling), who is essentially just a caricature of every generic villain ever. He doesn´t have any discernible reason for wanting to take over the world besides just being bored (I guess). A good villain is one who has some actual motivation besides "destroy everything" and even Sauron, who followed a very similar principle, was basically just a macguffin. Voldemort´s only personalities are "dick" and "bigger dick" so it comes as little emotional surprise when the lightning finally breaks through the "magical love wall" or whatever at the end and kills him.
So, is Deathly Hallows Part II any good? That´s a tough question for me to answer because I honestly don´t fucking know. There are parts that I´m sure are very emotionally compelling to people who actually know who these people are, but they just felt like forced attempts to illicit some kind of sympathy from the audience to me. It was difficult for me to enjoy when I had to ask my friend every five minutes what the hell they were talking about but I suspect if you´re the type of person who enjoys dues ex machina and magic and medieval shit then you´ll be happy as can be. It´s got lots of flashy lights and several one-on-one duel scenes that are made hilarious (to me) by the fact that they´re using wooden sticks instead of guns or something so it will at least keep you entertained (aka "distracted") for two hours, particularly if you´re actually a fan of the series.
For us normal people, however, it´s just another example of what happens when stay-at-home moms have far too much time on their hands.